Techmeme
December 24, 2023, 1:20 PM

Top News

Sharon Goldman / VentureBeat:
Researchers from Apple and Columbia University released Ferret, an open source multimodal LLM that can recognize and describe any shape in an image, in October  —  With little fanfare, researchers from Apple and Columbia University released an open source multimodal LLM, called Ferret, in October 2023.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Ubisoft is investigating reports of a new security breach after security research collective VX-Underground shared screenshots of the company's internal tools  —  Ubisoft is investigating whether it suffered a breach after images of the company's internal software and developer tools were leaked online.
Edd Gent / IEEE Spectrum:
Experts warn against unrealistic expectations for quantum computers, citing the challenges in making fault-tolerant systems, qubits' slow operating speeds, more  —  Hype is everywhere, skeptics say, and practical applications are still far away  —  The quantum computer revolution …
Ethan Zuckerman:
A study estimates that there are 13.3B+ videos on YouTube, of which 4B+ were posted to the platform in 2023, and the median YouTube video has 39 views  —  I got interested in this question a few years ago, when I started writing about the “denominator problem”.
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Elon Musk is fielding complaints about Grok giving liberal responses on diversity, transgender rights, and inequality, despite promising an “anti-woke” chatbot  —  Grok, launched this month on X, has angered conservatives by endorsing diversity.  Musk says he's trying to fix it.
Wall Street Journal:
A look at Sam Altman's history at Loopt and Y Combinator, where his side activities and personal projects riled colleagues and forced his departure from YC  —  The OpenAI CEO lost the confidence of top leaders in the three organizations he has directed, yet each time he's rebounded to greater heights
Washington Post:
Steven Scheer / Reuters:
Nvidia and its staff donated $15M to Israeli nonprofits helping civilians affected by the Israel-Hamas war, the largest humanitarian fundraiser for the company  —  U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O) and its employees have donated $15 million to Israeli non-profit organisations …
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:
A look at Take-Two's $12B Zynga deal in 2022, just as casual games peaked post pandemic, Apple introduced ATT, and the mobile game market headed into a downturn  —  Video-game giant's push into smartphone titles was expensive and late.  —  Excitement over the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto VI …
Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch:
GM pauses Chevy Blazer EV sales as it works to fix software problems, including the infotainment screen going blank, which affect a “limited number” of vehicles  —  General Motors has temporarily halted sales of the brand new Chevy Blazer EV after some of the first vehicles shipped encountered a number of software problems.
Wall Street Journal:
Bots registered as 13-year-old users on TikTok were shown highly polarized content about the Israel-Hamas war in the For You feed, within hours after signing up  —  Imagine your 13-year-old signs up for TikTok and, while scrolling through videos, lingers on footage of explosions …
MacDonald Dzirutwe / Reuters:
The Central Bank of Nigeria lifts a ban, imposed in February 2021, on cryptocurrency transactions but says global trends show a need to regulate such activities  —  Nigeria's central bank has lifted a ban on transacting in cryptocurrencies, while saying global trends had shown a need to regulate …

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More News

Forbes:
Josh Sisco / Politico:

Earlier Picks

The Block:
Michael Gennaro / Courthouse News Service:
Steven Levy / Wired:
Jay Peters / The Verge: